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                                               Intro Mary Garden

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Lillie Tower

James J. Galvin, C.SS.R.

Perpetual Help                                     August 1946

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    Woods Hole is a little seaside town set like a dimple right
in the elbow of Cape Cod.  I went there on a Saturday afternoon a
few years back, as I was to say Mass next morning at the little
church of St. Joseph for the summer visitors.  The pastor assured
me there would be no confessions until after supper, so I went for
a stroll about the town.  Now I've been to many towns in New
England and New York and in tropical Puerto Rico, but I still
remember Woods Hole as though it were but last weekend that I
were there.

     To the casual visitor, Woods Hole is like some toy town
whittled from whalebone and sealed in a glass bottle: it is that
quaint! Huge elms shelter the cool streets and hardly stir their
shadows when a breeze clips in from the Sound. People seem almost
to walk on tiptoe.  Children patter softly on bare feet. Down at
the wharves you'll see old salts mending their nets in silence
like monks bending over their rosaries.  Even the seagulls,
catching the spirit of the place, wheel noiselessly over the quiet
red buildings of the U. S. Marine Biological Laboratory.  And on
nearby cottages, pink roses go quietly about their business of
rambling up shingled walls and half-way over the low pitched
roofs.  You may hear occasional voices at Sam Cohoon's Market
where people buy black lobsters and quahogs and all sorts of
sea-food caught fresh that morning, but the voices are always
subdued.  In short, except for the train that bustles down from
Boston twice daily, and the tootle of the boat from Martha's
Vineyard that comes to meet it, there is no noise to speak of at
all. It is perhaps the quietest town in the whole world.

     However, there was another sound I recall: and perhaps it was
the general quiet of the town that made it such a surprise!  I was
skirting a small inlet on the way back to the rectory when
suddenly out of nowhere two bells began to ring; one high and
brittle, the other deep as slow thunder. Looking up and across the
quiet inlet, I saw a stone tower at the water's edge. Somehow I had
not noticed it before . . . but now it dominated the whole scene:
and on second look I saw that the Church was right behind it.  The
two bells continued their melodious rebuttal with a teasingly
familiar rhythm. And suddenly I knew.  It was the Angelus.  Six
o'clock and time for supper.

     Over the supper table the pastor told me how the donor, a
lady from Chicago who spends her summers at Woods Hole, had built
the tower and donated it to the parish.  Back in 1933 the Bishop
had come down from Fall River on a Sunday afternoon to bless the
bells and dedicate the Tower.  The bells were christened "Pasteur"
and "Mendel" after the two eminent Catholic scientists.  And for the
occasion the choral society of the Marine Biological Laboratories
came over and sang Latin and Orthodox hymns in the little garden
nearby.  For the lady it was a dream come true, for the whole idea
was her own: the stone bell-tower, the lending library, and the
Lady-garden nearby.  Just why she chose a bell-tower, and why
Mendel and Pasteur ring the Angelus three times a day in the quiet
little town is best expressed by herself: "It was to remind the
scientists who study at the Marine Biological Laboratory across
the inlet that there is another and valid aspect of life."

     Next morning after Mass, I strolled across the street to the
Tower, pushed open the rustic gate and walked into the little
garden.  It was not large.  A hedge of yew shielded it from the
street and passersby, so that you felt completely cut off from the
world.  It was like a dreamworld.  You could hear the seawater
supping gently at the stone blocks of the outer wall.  Beyond was
the quiet inlet with yachts at anchor, and perhaps a boy
skippering a row-boat across the placid water.  A stone statue of
Our Lady stood among the flowers close to the sea, and two small
birds with carillions in their gullets, hopped on the crown of the
Madonna's head and sang.

     It was no ordinary garden, though at first glance you might
think so.  It teemed with red roses, orange marigolds, campion,
fuchsia and blue forget-me-nots.  Many called it an old fashioned
garden.  But actually it was much more.  It was intended to be a
Lady-garden: perhaps the first of its kind in the New World!  It
was to cater only to such flowers as bore the name of Mary, or
suggested some trait or mystery in Our Lady's life.

     Posted on a convenient placard was a list of the flowers the
lady hoped some day to assemble here between the bell-tower and
the stone Madonna.  Names culled from the merry days when England
was Mary's England . . . when all the flowers of the field were
named after her!  Scanning the list, you suddenly realized that
even the flowers you could name, were actually parading under
false colors. Forget-me-not and campion and fuchsia were not their
names at all. It came as a revelation that foxglove and
honeysuckle were Our Lady's Fingers.  And what a world of
difference between a name like white campion and Our Lady's
Candles; between forget-me-nots and Eyes of Mary!  Who would ever
think of calling morning glories Our Lady's Mantle?  Or spiderwort
our Lady's Tears?  It struck you that somewhere between
Shakespeare's England and today some shameful thing had happened:
that even the flowers should disown the Mother of God to barter
their common Baptism for a new name.

     Somehow about this little patch of soil there was something
of a battle-cry.  It was like the launching of some shining new
crusade: to win back for Our Lady the flowers of the field.  For
in this garden the flowers were to be known and called by their
Christian names.  Would you believe it, there is a list of over
five hundred flowers named after the Mother of God!  So far but a
small number of them were growing here.  But it was a beginning.
And brightly the lady looked forward to a day when "the right
man" would turn up . . . a gardener who would make it the passion
of his life to choir Our Lady's glories in blossoms, so that with
each week a new crop of ladyflowers will open from the midweeks of
March till the first frost.  Lady's Lace and Mary's Fan.  Lady
Cushion, Lady Smock and Lady's Mantle.  St. Mary's Seed and Lady
Never-fade. Lady Comb,  Madonna Lily, Lady's Ear-drops.  Lady Pins
and Lady's Looking-glass.  The casual visitor could all but pray
the litany of Loretto, simply by naming the flowers at his feet!

     I walked over to the stone tower at the other end of the
garden.  A bronze door was open, leading into a small room that
might almost have been the cell of some hermit monk from Lerins or
Iona.  The stone floor was cleanswept, with three small windows to
let in sunlight and a glimpse of the sea.  On the wall were the
miniature original models of the Stations of the Cross done by
Alfeo Faggi for the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, Chicago.
Behind the door was a kneeling bench. It was as though the monk
who dwelt there had just gone into the garden to pick some herbs,
or had rowed across the water to some island to visit a brother
hermit and discuss the things of God.

     By a happy anachronism there was also a rack of books there;
and a table inviting you to sit and read.  A sign assured you that
it would be permissible to take home a book you liked . . . but to
return it before the end of summer . . . (before the monk
returned). Here were the choicest of the Christian classics: St.
Augustine and Pascal and Abbot Columba Marmion; Bernard of
Clairvaux and Thomas of Acquin and Hilaire Belloc;  Chaucer and
Gilbert Chesterton, Dante and Maritain; John of the Cross, Paul
Claudel and Teresa of Avila.

     What surprises awaited the curious who would pick up these
books . . . what sparkling glimpses of Christian truth!  I was
thumbing through the poems of Francis Ledwidge, the peasant poet
of Ireland when a strange racket sounded in the stone vault.
Mender and Pasteur were beginning their musical arguments. Twelve
noon. The two bells were ringing the Angelus again: the tidings of
the Angel to our Lady . . . and reminding the quiet town of Woods
Hole and the Marine Biological Laboratories that God had become a
man to save us all.  After the Angelus, I hurried out of the
Tower, through the Lady garden, and back across the street.



Reprinted with permission